27. Benjamin.
²⁷ Benjamin is a ravening wolf:
In the morning he devours the prey,
And at eve divides the spoil.
Benjamin is praised for its predatory instincts, and its unflagging zest for war. The early history contains a good deal to justify the comparison: its fight with Moab (Judges 315 ff.), its share in the struggle with the Canaanites (Judges 5¹⁴), its desperate stand against united Israel (Judges 19 f.); it was famous for its skill in slinging and archery (Judges 20¹⁶, 1 Chronicles 8⁴⁰ 12², 2 Chronicles 14⁷ 17¹⁷). But a special reference to the short-lived reign of Saul is probable: the dividing of spoil reminds us of the king who clothed the daughters of Israel with scarlet and ornaments (2 Samuel 1²⁴).—The contrast between this description and the conception of Benjamin in the Joseph-stories is an instructive example of how tribal characteristics were obscured in the biographical types evolved by the popular imagination.
27. זאב יטרָף] Descriptive imperfect, see Davidson § 44, R. 3, § 142. On pausal ā see Gesenius-Kautzsch § 29 u.—עד] = ‘booty,’ Isaiah 33²³, Zephaniah 3⁸ [? Isaiah 9⁵]; LXX ἔτι.
28abα (to אביהם) is the subscription to the poem; the remainder of the verse belongs to Priestly-Code, and probably continued 1a in that source.—the tribes of Israel, twelve in number] The division into 12 tribes is an artificial scheme, whose origin is uncertain (see Luther, Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, xxi. 33 ff.; Peters, Early Hebrew Story, 55 ff.). It obtained also amongst the Edomites, Ishmaelites, and other peoples; and in Israel betrays its theoretic character by the different ways in which the number was made up, of which the oldest is probably that followed in the Song of Jacob. In Deuteronomy 33, Simeon is omitted, and Joseph divided into Ephraim and Manasseh; in Priestly-Code (Numbers 2) Joseph is again divided, to the exclusion not of Simeon, but of Levi.
The recently revived theory of a connexion between the original sayings of the Blessing and the signs of the Zodiac calls for a brief notice at this point. The most striking correspondences were set forth by Zimmern in Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, vii. (1892), 161 ff.; viz., Simeon and Levi = Gemini (see page 517); Judah = Leo, with the king-star Regulus on its breast (בין רגליו); and Joseph = Taurus. This last comparison, it is true, rests on Deuteronomy 33 rather than Genesis 49, and is only imported into this passage by a violent reconstruction of verse ²² (page 530). Other possible combinations mentioned by Zimmern are Issachar = Aselli (in Cancer), Dan = Serpens (North of Libra), Benjamin = Lupus (South of Scorpio), and Naphtali = Aries (reading אַיִל for אַיָּלָה). Stucken (Mittheilungen der vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, 1902, 166 ff.), after a laboured proof that Reuben corresponds to Behemoth (hippopotamus), an old constellation now represented by Aquarius, completed the circle after a fashion, with the necessary addition of Dinah = Virgo as the missing sign; and his results are adopted by Jeremias (Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients², 395 ff.). A somewhat different arrangement is given by Winckler in Altorientalische Forschungen, iii. 465 ff. These conjectures, however, add little to the evidence for the theory, which must in the main be judged by the seven coincidences pointed out in Zimmern’s article. That these amount to a demonstration of the theory cannot be affirmed; but they seem to me to go far to show that it contains an element of truth. It is hardly accidental that in each series we have one double sign (Gemini, Simeon-Levi) and one female personification (Virgo, Dinah), and that all the animal names occurring in the Song (lion, ass, serpent, ram?, ox?, wolf) can be more or less plausibly identified with constellations either in the Zodiac or sufficiently near it to have been counted as Zodiacal signs in early times. The incompleteness of the correspondence is fairly explained by two facts: first, that the poem has undergone many changes in the course of its transmission, and no longer preserves the original form and order of the oracles; and second, that while the twelve-fold division of the ecliptic goes back to the remotest antiquity, the traditional names of the twelve signs cannot all be traced to the ancient Babylonian astronomy. It may be added that there is no prima facie objection to combinations of this sort. The theory does not mean that the sons of Jacob are the earthly counterparts of the Zodiacal constellations, and nothing more. All that is implied is that an attempt was made to discover points of resemblance between the fortunes and characteristics of the twelve tribes on the one hand, and the astro-mythological system on the other. Such combinations were necessarily arbitrary, and it might readily happen that some were too unreal to live in the popular memory. Where the correspondence is plausible, we may expect to find that the characterisation of the tribe has been partly accommodated to the conceptions suggested by the comparison; and great caution will have to be observed in separating the bare historical facts from the mythological allusions with which they are embellished. In the present state of the question, it may be safely said that the historical interpretation must take precedence. The Zodiacal theory will have to be reckoned with in the interpretation of the Song; but it has as yet furnished no trustworthy clue either to the explanation of obscure details, or to the restoration of the text.
28. שבטי ישראל] LXX υἱοὶ Ἰακώβ.—איש אשר כְּ׳] Such a construction is impossible. We must either omit the relatives (Versions) or read איש איש (Olshausen, Delitzsch, Kautzsch-Socin, Gunkel, al.).